


Repeated Evidence

by gogollescent



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-21 23:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13751181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: HxH shortfic archived from tumblr! ft. bad shipping and worse friendships





	1. Chapter 1

Of course his dreams pretended that his family was alive. He would fall asleep in a new place or in a place he hadn’t visited in some time, a safe house maybe, and then? His mother would shake him awake as roughly as she ever had (not knowing her own strength, she claimed). She’d look at him askance— _what have you done to yourself!_ —and begin to smile. His mother had no sense of humor when she fought and a good one after winning. In the dream his eyes were red and that was why she laughed, although before when his eyes turned red she was always concerned, even if it happened for no reason. But that had to why she was laughing, because otherwise it would have been because he had thought she was dead; and if he had made such a mistake he couldn’t bear for her to know. His face was hot around his eyes and out to his hairline; his hair prickled like he could feel it growing. 

She dragged him out to the garden, where spring was at its height. There his father hung laundry, and Grandfather sat listening to him discourse on the planting, bemused, as even the elders occasionally were, by how slowly and meaningfully his father could talk about nothing. And Pairo was there, running his fingers between the morning-dried linens; when no one was looking pulling a sheet over his head. From inside that cowl he stared straight at Kurapika—he saw better in low light—and mouthed, Why are you still here? 

Because he had been supposed to go away, to the outer world. But only he and Pairo knew that.

All throughout Kurapika felt his mother’s hand in his, tightening proudly. In the end he woke up clutching both hands together, so tightly his pulse seemed to swell through the bone. He should have let go then. But he forgot, and kept his palms together, emptying out the memory of the gesture, and leaving just his painful, thoughtless grip.

And then sometimes it was one person who survived: it was his father, in a harness that strangely restricted his movements, what Kurapika finally understood was a spider’s web. It was his mother, blinded but alive, begging and then ordering him severely to return her eyes. Sometimes Sheila led him to their secret cave, where she had hidden the whole clan when the spiders came, remembering how he and Pairo had helped her, and wanting to return the favor—although she herself was a spider, she had defected, the dream explained—and he would go there in dread, knowing somehow they were dead, and she was lying, and they were dead, and there in the cavern they were, tired and frightened, and Grandfather took him by the hand and said, the book saved us, which was wrong. It was so wrong that that should be true, what he had hoped for—then he wanted to cry, when he woke up, he was that ashamed to have been taken in.

He wasn’t prepared to have dreams in which Uvogin, too, was alive—unconditionally returned. His enemy appeared first in the good dreams of home, with the other dead. Uvogin stopped him on the path to school. Uvogin towered over him, because he was home again and a child, but that didn’t prevent the brute from tossing him around like a doll. Kurapika would scramble, dodge, roll, but it was pointless, marking time until Uvogin’s fist caught up; it felt literally like he was dancing, counting dully in his head, until big fingers pinched his leg and flung him into the air. 

“Is there something you can do to stop me dreaming?” he asked Senritsu, once, on stakeout. She paused in the act of transferring a handful of french fries to her open mouth—she liked to bite into five or six at a time, a habit totally unknowable to Kurapika—and he had enough time to reevaluate that he added, “Or give me only pleasant dreams. I understand that dreaming has health benefits.”

She hesitated longer, and, with a sigh, eased the fries back into the cup. “Have you been having nightmares?”

“Why, do I not look tired?”

“Oh, you do. —Oh!” She rolled her eyes and helped herself to a fry after all, in lieu of any apology; after a second, he let himself smile. “But… your heart… lately, when you sleep, it’s sounded happy. All afternoon, I remember, it was going like a drum.”

They had napped in a motel room before setting up camp outside the significantly more luxurious hotel where his targets, at some point tonight, would materialize for the sale. Although probably she could hear and interpret his heart from the far side of the Nostrade mansion. “So I was excited,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I was happy.”

Senritsu, sobering, said, “Doesn’t it? You like when you lose control. It’s a comfort to know you can. It proves that what happened, happened.”

“In a dream, whatever happens _didn’t_ happen,” Kurapika pointed out.

“That’s not always true. Don’t you ever have dreams that use your memories?”

“Yes. They’re inaccurate.”

Senritsu shrugged and started to crank her seat back. “I didn’t mean that, anyway. You were _happy_. Like a great burden had been lifted from your shoulders, and your heart was as light as the rest of you. I said a drum, but what I mean is—an open sound.” She held up her fingers in a diamond, and jerked them apart. “Boom boom boom boom.” Then she did her usual conductor’s twirl, which he found comforting, since it at least simulated professional expertise. Unlike _boom boom boom_.

“There!” said Senritsu, sitting up straight (and getting tangled in her seatbelt). “By the pool. No—he’s getting into the hot tub.”

Kurapika, already out of the car, didn’t stop to ask her what a hot tub’s aural signature was. But he thought about it, while restraining the seller, and then waiting for and tying up the would-be buyer, and commencing negotiations. 

In the end he came away with an address and verification of one of the photographs he had purchased online. Senritsu used her Nen ability to calm both distressed parties, and from the parking lot, Kurapika called the hotel to alert them, anonymously, to possible intruders. On the drive out of the city, Senritsu said, “Yes, I think I could guarantee you a good dream.”

Kurapika had still been wondering vaguely about the hot tub. It took him a moment to recall the substance of their earlier conversation. 

“But,” she said, adjusting her neck rest, “it’s more complicated than that. The music that I play to curb your rage is essentially a constructed environment, tailored to… well, it’s an interesting question, isn’t it? I’m not a Manipulator. I can’t force you to see anything. When I extend my aura to you, it responds to your goals as well as mine. So your mind converts a sense of strength and control into an image… in your case, I remember, we were in a forest.

“That’s the image your conscious mind associates with calm. If, however, I projected my aura with the embedded command, ‘be happy,’ and your subconscious absorbed that into the dream, who knows what would occur?”

“I see,” lied Kurapika. “It doesn’t sound like such a good idea, in that case. Forget I mentioned it.”

Senritsu hummed. “Very well.”

“…‘But’?”

“But it’s an interesting application. It had never occurred to me to try to soothe someone already asleep.” She gave him an apologetic smile. “Also, it would be a way for you to confirm what I’ve already told you: if I’m right, your dreams under the influence of this technique will be similar to those you’ve been experiencing on your own. It wouldn’t take long. When we stop for the night…?”

“You mean ‘for the day,’” said Kurapika, nodding vaguely at the grey line of dawn.

*

So in the end he lay down, at the safe house, on a futon slightly younger than he was, and Senritsu unpacked her flute. By now the light was strong, though it still cut almost horizontally—overhead, in fact, for someone flat on the low bed. But it unrolled a stripe of yellow against her cheek, her chin in the shade even weaker than usual: he had a fleeting, distant intuition as to how much he valued her, but it was like evaluating the relationship between two strangers, and what he really felt was impatience, mirrored in her sleepy eyes. She lifted the flute at some distance from her head, as if offering it to someone else, and then brought it to her lips and began to play.

He fell asleep almost immediately, though he had been afraid that, between excitement and disappointment, he would be too keyed-up to rest at all. Nothing was as bitter to him as failing to sleep; an hour of his life lost for every second of strength was bad, but how much worse—an hour lost every hour? And although he, perforce, found Senritsu’s music calming, he had always thought that part of that effect was because it demanded complete attention: whether because of her talent, or the magnetism of her aura, he wanted to map the sound as he heard it—it was around the edges of that compulsion that the meadow, the forest, bloomed up. But how to fall asleep while paying attention? 

However he did it, it was easy: one moment awake, worrying about whether he would sleep, and then slipping successively downward, it seemed—it never went dark, he never wasn’t watching, but suddenly he rose, without weight, feeling unusually as if leaving his body behind—not forever, but in bursts, his will plunging ahead and dream-body following. He was at the door. He fully expected, on the other side, a meadow. In his heart he had believed that the calm afforded him in that space _was_ happiness, of the kind Senritsu offered: he remembered his gratitude, the first time she showed her power, and kept him from killing Uvogin too soon. 

He opened the door. It was night. The moon glowed red over the canyon.

From across his knuckles, the chain jerked. Uvogin struggled and roared, but was punctilious enough about testing Kurapika’s creation—a better assurance of quality than Kurapika could have asked for. And now, because this was the promised happy dream, he felt each lurch with a shudder of terror, waiting for the scene to change. He remembered all of his waking life and—he believed—all his dreams, he had “access” to a whole world, and a world he controlled: he remembered choices, one after another, as freely made and desperate in life as in his dreams. Because nothing compared to the urgency of his dreams, so that was the standard to measure by. Here.

He walked closer. Uvogin’s bared teeth were enormous, but otherwise, he had a human face, for all the fur and spittle. Happiness? He wasn’t happy. Satisfied, vigilant, growing nauseous—but Uvogin wouldn’t talk. Maybe in this dream the man would answer.

He shot the Judgment Chain into Uvogin’s heart. Uvogin screamed, and the chains snapped.

Kurapika flung himself to the ground. Stupid: it was a child’s instinct, hearing thunder. Uvogin ran forward, silent, and Kurapika clapped his hands over his ears. The blade of the chain was still in Uvogin’s chest and the broken length of chain trailed down; just as they both noticed, Uvogin tripped.

It took him a long time to fall, and his landing did shake the ground. Then he lay still. There were dust clouds. Kurapika didn’t try to get up. I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, he thought, still nauseous, and heavy with horror at his own futile relief: as without sound Uvogin raised his head up, and grinned back.


	2. Chapter 2

Kurapika sat with ankles crossed at the foot of the guest bedroom’s tiny bed, wearing what Senritsu automatically classified, in the back of her mind, as a ‘number’—probably little, certainly slinky, color indeterminate in the bad light. Although she herself didn’t know what distinguished a number from a dress, and even as she thought so began preparing a definition, on the small but real chance he would ask.

When she shut the door, he held out his hand and let fall the dowsing chain. She had a feeling he knew she had heard him fiddling with it—he always conjured authentically noisy chains—was too embarrassed to put it away.

“This is a terrible mattress,” Kurapika announced. “It’s lumpy. You should have told me.”

“I thought it was a statement.”

“As in a statement that I don’t want guests to be comfortable?”

“I just thought you didn’t want guests.” 

“It came furnished,” said Kurapika, but he sounded doubtful, as if he no longer remembered whether he’d intentionally schemed to drive off visitors or not. Senritsu, meanwhile, recalled with a gulp that the previous tenant’s remains were still on the wall of the Yorkshin residence. She hoped Kurapika had at least changed the bedding. 

His outfit became a more appealing conversation piece than the décor. “What’s the occasion?” she said with a nod.

There was no immediate reply. His heart went on a wandering sequence of rhythms, and to her surprise—she was even rather touched—the forgotten chain swung at the same changeable rate, circle narrowing as the pendant slowed. 

“What does music mean to you?” he asked.

“It seems as if you might be avoiding an issue,” said Senritsu, watching the plumb bob rock on its tether. The chain straightened right away, pointing at Kurapika, who huffed under his breath and dematerialized it whole—though his gauntlet remained.

“Of course, but I’m still curious. Didn’t you become a hunter for the sake of that sonata?”

“No, I was a hunter before then. How do you think my friend and I got ahold of it?”

Kurapika gave her an odd look. “That’s what I meant.”

“…oh. I thought you meant—for the sake of getting it back. No, we didn’t even know it existed until after I passed the exam. There was someone else, who failed… But I’m boring you,” she said, conscious that she had no real desire to tell Kurapika the story of how her friend had learned the sonata, behind her back. She had only begun to out of a wish to tell him something else, which she couldn’t in fairness say: Not everyone becomes a Hunter to retrieve something lost, Kurapika. I did it because I wanted to find out if I could. In another sense he wasn’t wrong, and wouldn’t have been wrong even if he had meant what she first assumed. She had fully joined the Hunter community only after her body was destroyed. Before then, she took good care of her license, studied Nen with her friend, and made a living teaching and a pittance performing, exactly as though she were a civilian. 

 “You must know that’s not true.” He put a hand over his heart—pretending to check his own pulse, tribute paid her ability lest she even for a moment think he had forgotten it. He did it so quickly that it was an almost furtive gesture: she amused herself with the image of him _hiding_ his heartbeat, the way a student would cover a yawn. “Sometimes I forget that not everyone can tell everything important about their lives in a sentence or two.” He cocked his head. No one can! she almost blurted, when she processed what he had said, but by then it was too late. Listening to a person’s melody made words deafeningly clumsy. “Sorry if I’ve acted disinterested. I thought I understood your situation; I gather I’m missing pieces. It’s fine if you don’t want to share. You still haven’t told me what it is you think of music.”

“What I _think_ of it?” She smiled at him, feeling her teeth catch on her lip. “I think it’s important, I suppose. It has a power that I’m only ever beginning to master. It’s also a habit. Sometimes I wonder how much I’m missing just because it all comes back to music for me.”

“I’m sure you’re not missing much,” said Kurapika baldly. “If it weren’t music, it would be some other… anchor. No one’s a generalist.” He brushed his hair out of his eyes, the better to glare at some imagined specter behind her, and added, “I have a new target.”

Finally. “Yes?”

“A musician. His set was inherited, but he’s refused all offers. What would a musician want with a pair of eyes?”

“I… don’t know. It depends on the musician.”

“You can think of _multiple_ reasons a musician would prefer stolen human eyes to a billion jenny?”

Senritsu counted out suggestions on her fingers—up high, where Kurapika could see. “He might be foolish and want them for his art. He might be a collector, like Neon, and only a hobbyist musician. He might have no idea of their value, in which case it would be a short leap to assume that you were playing a joke on him.” She spoke faster: “If they were his inheritance, he might consider them a memento of the previous owner.”

His heart thudded into a sprint, with dreary, trained alertness; there was nothing insincere about his rage, but sometimes Kurapika himself heard it coming, and braced his body like a fighter in a ring for the punishment he wanted. To her surprise, he opened his mouth, paused, and said, “That sounds right. From his music, I believe he’s somewhat sentimental. He may even be aware of the eyes’ source and unable to come to terms with it. His last e-mail was heated.”

He sounded bemused, not even contemptuous—like his pulse wasn’t humming. As far as she knew, he hadn’t killed anyone since his confrontation with the Phantom Troupe. He had recovered four sets of eyes. She’d thought he would die of his terrible mission; but until then, it might yet be good for him. Certainly he was meeting all kinds of people.

“You listened to his music?”

“I thought it might give me insight…” Kurapika plucked the front of the dress and sighed. “He’s performing at the Lincoln Center. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get close enough. Apparently he’s also happily married.”

“Mm.”

“I did have one other idea—they have an event, the ‘battle of the bands’…”

Senritsu pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, coughed, and kept coughing. When she raised her head, Kurapika was watching her with barely-disguised expectancy. 

“Artists respect other artists,” he informed her, when no encouragement was instantly forthcoming. “If I can impress him on the stage…” A still longer silence. “I would be grateful for your advice.”

Senritsu, not thinking very hard, walked forward; Kurapika automatically scooted to make room, but she went past him, to the walk-in closet. Kurapika started to stand up; “You’ll want to look the part,” she threw over her shoulder, and heard him sit. Finally she found what she had been digging for. She held up a flannel shirt.

Kurapika’s face fell. 

“Hmm, yes. How do you feel about rat-tails?”

*

Later, as Basho dragged the (rented) tour bus’s rear through another hairpin turn, Senritsu reflected that she could have given Kurapika _less_ advice. But then, of course, he might never have brought her along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now with [this incredible illustration,](http://canalsobemoe.tumblr.com/post/170998587441/you-can-think-of-multiple-reasons-a-musician) courtesy of @canalsobemoe, I am so grateful.


	3. Chapter 3

“We’ve inspired a rumor,” said Pariston, sitting with a thump on the box crate that Ging had been hoping to pretend to nap against. That was bad enough, but he’d come prepared to fidget, and his idly kicking loafer grazed Ging’s arm. Contact might have been an actual mistake—certainly when Ging grabbed his ankle he looked horrified. “Oops,” he said, faintly. “My bad, I’m all wound up.”

He didn’t say, don’t touch me, but he stared at Ging as if searching for some evidence of humanity—the face a really sensitive person might turn on a half-smashed cockroach.

“Yeesh,” said Ging, letting his hand spring open. “Whattya mean, a rumor?”

“Well, I’ve discouraged the others,” Pariston explained, uncrossing his legs to set both feet flat on the floor. Now he was perfectly upright, like a schoolboy, with hands loosely clasped in front of his knees. “This one goes as follows: long ago, when we were junior Hunters—”

“We? I’m older than you.” He wasn’t, but it turned hilarious when Pariston didn’t correct him. “And I got licensed when I was twelve. Didn’t you take the exam as an adult?”

“Let’s assume they meant me, as the rumor isn’t age appropriate for a just-licensed Ging Freecss.”

“Wait, what the hell?” Ging started to laugh. “Exes and you don’t know my nen ability?”

“Does that mean you have ex-partners who do know your nen ability?” said Pariston, leaning forward.

“Sure,” said Ging, leaning back, which didn’t really serve to move him further away from Pariston, but which did give him a neck ache, squashed against the crate. He counted on his fingers: “Kite, Eeta, the Chairman…”

Eyes falsely widened under the shaggy fringe: “The Chairman?”

“What kind of partner did you think I was talking about?”

Pariston sighed. He rolled his jaw on a supporting fist without quite opening his mouth, the most disturbing, and therefore most mundane, extended facial expression Ging had ever seen him make. His squeamishness about touch was interesting, not least because Ging wasn’t sure he’d noticed it yet. Did the rumor bother him? Was that why he encouraged it? But what was so bad about people thinking they’d been around one another’s block? It seemed out of character for Pariston to have standards in this one area of his career—‘fake boyfriends.’ 

“Oh,” Ging realized. “You’re mad I started it.”

Pariston’s gaze by now was positively dreamy. He was still resting his face on his hand, but it had slipped, so his knuckles were digging into his cheek. “I had it all planned out,” he said. “Simmering arguments—struggles for authority—”

“If Muherr’s attack was your script, I’m not sure I wanna see the romcom. Hey.” He grabbed Pariston by the back of the hair and dragged him down until their foreheads brushed. Pariston’s eye started to twitch, though he was holding onto the smile.

“Are you trying to manipulate me into initiating a bunch of fake PDA to ‘annoy’ you more?”

“…” grinned Pariston.

“It’s your funeral. Get a load of this afternoon breath.” But Pariston had abruptly relaxed, and when Ging gave another tug, he slithered into his lap. “Ack,” said Ging, stunned by force of cologne.

“Oof,” Pariston agreed—he had landed in a kneeling crouch, he had incredibly pointy knees—his arm was around Ging’s neck, had been since the forehead touch, and bracing himself on Ging he shot to his feet.

He did a series of quick stretches, arms over head, while Ging blew his nose on his hat to get the rose attar out. There was a nasty cracking-vertebrae sound, and Ging got his face out in time to see Pariston’s look of real surprise; then Pariston noticed him recovering and broke for the door. Ging, not really thinking, got up lazily to jog after.

(“NOT EXES,” said Golem, from the tunnel above. Muherr shook his head.

“WEIRD SEX GAME,” added Golem. Muherr nodded, head in hands.)


	4. Chapter 4

When they played she was aware of being watched. It was a strange feeling, unlike any she had had before, playing before an audience of—well, hundreds; of course she had heard other people say that they knew when they were being watched or that they could sense a pair of eyes on their back, and she heard others say that that was superstition—but as for her, she had always felt a great wide nothingness. It wasn’t that she was as blind inside as out, unable to detect or respond to a signal no matter how brightly it shone; when she played gungi, _in her mind_ it was as though she had stretched out her arms as far as they could reach, like her fingers hovered and grew huge enough to cover endless space, her skin all the while prickling with expectation, ready for some outside touch—but there was never a touch. And now, for the first time, she didn’t have to search at all. Right under her hand was a black piece: and under her other hand, her mind’s secret hand, was an eye, alive, flickering. No, not one: three people were looking after her.

One was the Supreme Leader. No surprise if he was more real to her than other opponents. Maybe she had never before felt anyone’s scrutiny because she simply hadn’t been close to anyone else. No one had ever followed her, obeyed her hidden directions, as eagerly as this. He was so kind. Once, in an early game, he slid all the way up the side of the board, leaving his fortress untended, all in his determination to destroy her from behind her own lines; she nearly wept at his selflessness. She would have liked to believe that her new alertness was in answer to his attention, a small return. But that couldn’t be true, because the two other presences had never said a word to her, and were as real and vigilant as his. One she thought was the guard who brought meals to the Supreme Leader occasionally, who received messages from other soldiers, who tapped his foot when they played gungi, and leaned back and sat up again in a creaking chair. If so, he hated her. His ‘eye’ was very cold, it fluttered as though blinking away tears, and she remembered, guiltily, how in childhood she’d played with captured flies, after going to the trouble of “rescuing” them from the cat. She had meant well, liking the brush of trapped wings, and wishing the injured flies could be tamed; but she knew now that it had been wrong.

The other presence she had no name for. It was heavy! It came less often, from a long way away. True, the room she was in was part of a long, long hall, she remembered every minute of the walk from the door to his feet, waiting desperately to strike an edge with her stick; but the other eyes were further off than that. Whoever it was didn’t hate her, they weren’t angry, they were only puzzled: when she leaned to catch at it, they withdrew. _Catch at it_ —now, that didn’t sound like an eye. In fact, sometimes she felt she was running her hands over some deep mass of softness, like the old cat’s fur. 

Then came

heat

she was on her back. She was in so much pain she felt indignant. She hadn’t lost, and yet here was this pain, come for her life.

“No, no, no, no,” said someone above her, with a strange accent—it sounded like ‘nyo.’ Their voice was so soft they might not have spoken—she had the pleasant illusion that she was listening to their thoughts. At least, it would have been pleasant, if not for the pain, inside of which that sound floated as an island, while all around it walls of pain roared up. And there was also. On her chest. That evil weight, so heavy and bursting, that it pressed down on pain and left itself, a feeling far more terrible. She was afraid, and though she breathed, it was like her ribcage was completely insubstantial, passing up _through_ the black weight as it expanded and contracted. What she felt wasn’t her body, but the other person’s gaze, driven through her like a ram. And still: they didn’t hate her. They were desperate, and they didn’t understand.

I’m awake, she wanted to say, I’m here, but she couldn’t move her lips; she was wearing a mask. She couldn’t open her eyes for a moment. First she believed she had opened them—again—now, I have!—but it didn’t lift the lids a millimeter, because they, too, were held down by some mighty paw. But Komugi wasn’t deterred. If anything, she felt stronger with passing minutes, and the pain changed and slithered inside her gut. That was the stranger, she thought; someone was doing that. They were so afraid, so uncertain, but they were healing her.

Thank you! she wanted to say. Don’t stop! She would have grabbed hold of that invisible paw, if it had been real and not her mind’s own illusion—no, regardless; if she had been able to move her arms. No matter how its owner struggled, she would not let go. _Don’t look away from me_. Strangely, she was slipping back into the sleep the pain had interrupted, recognizable from how it gripped the tips of her fingers and her feet, creeping up on her; she went into it grudgingly, afraid not to remember.


End file.
